Video game developers seem intent on making their games easier, simpler and more accessible, all in an effort to try to reach a wider audience and sell more copies of their game. The Dead Space franchise has fallen victim to this, with Dead Space 3 taking a more action-oriented approach to its gameplay and moving away from its terrifying survival horror roots.

The recent release of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is another example of a storied video game franchise simplifying its mechanics in an effort to reach a wider audience. I remember watching my dad and older brothers play the original XCOM: UFO Defense and seeing them invest countless hours into understanding the title’s various intricacies. The modern re-imagining of the series, XCOM: Enemy Unkown, retains much of what attracted gamers to the original series, but the micro-managing and some of XCOM’s deeper features have been stripped from the game.

Games like Skyrim and Final Fantasy XIII have suffered similar fates. Although in Skyrim’s case, most of the changes to the Morrowind franchise were for the better.

Final Fantasy XIII was a bad game. A very bad, extremely simple video game. Handout/Square Enix

In some ways, making video games more accessible is great. Game design does evolve, after all. But, on the other hand, there has to be point where developers stop trying to make their games easier for people to get into.

Part of the fun of playing video games is the challenge they provide and the sense of satisfaction the player feels after navigating through a particularly difficult section in a game. Also, there’s still an audience out there for hardcore, complicated games.

I was pleasantly surprised that, with Halo 4, 343 Industries has managed to strike a balance between making the title more accessible and retaining the hardcore gameplay that originally attracted gamers to the series. Even though many of the features 343 Industries have added to the series make it more accessible – on-screen grenade indicators, weapon spawn locations – the fact that its difficulty level is considerably higher than past titles, offers up a refreshing challenge.

As a seasoned Halo veteran, I found it particularly difficult to play through the game’s single player campaign on the normal difficulty. In the past, I usually played Halo titles on the second highest difficulty, called Heroic.

DayZ is an extremely hardcore video game. Handout/Bohemia Interactive

From a business perspective, I totally get it. Make your games easier: include a female character option and lower the difficulty level. This removes many of the barriers a lot of people experience when it comes to video games. Admittedly, I haven’t touched the popular zombie PC game, DayZ, simply because the amount of time it takes to play the game is too much of an investment for me right now. That and the fact that the game isn’t exactly easy for new players to get into.

During my interview with the DayZ’s creator, Dean Hall, he brought up an interesting point. His game isn’t afraid to frustrate and annoy players. After investing hours into the title, if you die in DayZ, you’re dead. There are no saved games and no turning back time.

New Super Mario Bros. U seems like it’s on a mission to be the msot accessible Mario title yet. Handout/Nintendo

This creates a deeply emotional interactive experience that probably gets pretty frustrating at times. But it also gives gamers a challenge that doesn’t really seem to exist in the world of video games anymore. Over the years, the Super Mario franchise has become increasingly more accessible and, with New Super Mario Bros. U, Nintendo is adding a feature that allows gamers to place blocks with the Wii U’s game pad that helps them through difficult areas of a level.

This accessibility movement is driven by the popularity of simple time-waster tablet and smartphone games. I like that games have become more accessible, but in some ways I miss the old school challenge classic video games provide.

At Gamercamp in Toronto last weekend, I got the chance to have a conversation with New Zealand-based video game developer, Dean “Rocket” Hall, the creator of the hardcore zombie survival horror title DayZ that has captivated the PC gaming world.

DayZ sold over 300,000 copies in the first two months of its release but, surprisingly, it’s not even a full fledged game – not yet anyway. DayZ is a mod; an altered version of a relatively unknown tactical shooting video game called Arma II.

DayZ has been praised by many major gaming outlets for its innovative approach to the game’s design. Some publications have even described it as the best zombie game ever made.

In DayZ, gamers play as a survivor with limited supplies, forcing them to scavenge the world for food, weapons, water and medicine. Players also need to avoid zombies and other players looking to kill them and steal their supplies.

Since DayZ is a mod, it’s a little rough around the edges. Animations are choppy and Arma II’s engine is pretty outdated. People don’t seem to care though and the game is still attracting players in droves. A group of dedicated players have even set up a server that follows the format of The Hunger Games.

Perhaps the most interesting feature in DayZ is the fact that when you’re killed, whether it’s by a zombie or another online player, you’re completely dead. There are no save points and there is no going back. When you’re dead, you’re dead. The countless hours you’ve invested into your character are gone.

This forces characters to be more careful when making decisions in the game and has fostered an interesting community where some players are banding together in large groups, killing lone players and stealing their supplies.

Q: I haven’t actually played DayZ (mainly because I don’t really play PC games), but I’ve read a lot about it and I’ve seen a ton of YouTube videos of people interacting in the game online. It really is one of most unique and coolest games I’ve seen in a long time. Could you explain what DayZ is all about?

Dean Hall: DayZ was a mod for a game called ArmaII, which is a military simulator game released in 2009 by Bohemia Interactive. It has a heavy modding ability built into it. The mod itself is a zombie survival mod. The player starts on a beach in a post apocalyptic world and they have to survive. It’s an open world game so you can pretty much do whatever you want and the only goal is to really just survive and interact with other players.

Q: How did you come up with the concept for DayZ? It’s not necessarily unique (we’ve all played zombie games before), but the way that you’ve approached the concept of the traditional zombie video game in terms of game mechanics certainly is.

Dean Hall: I originally joined the air force when I was younger and I did my officer training. I got sick of the video game industry when I finally ended up in it and I quit. I ended up back in the army and re-enlisted and I had to redo my officer training. I actually realized that they haven’t changed their training in 10 years. So I was like, “this is crazy.” While on exchange, I actually did a survival course in Singapore. It was really hard and I found that I learned alot about emotional context in situations like that. So I was wondering, why can’t we use computers to do this?

“DayZ was a tremendous accident that happened while I was working on something else.”

So I worked on creating a prototype of Arma II that offered this ability; a persistent world where soldiers can run around and actually have to eat food and stuff like that… There was no real interest in this game from the New Zealand army though. So I kind of looked at other things I could do with it. A few of my friends thought it was a cool idea and asked the question, “What would you do if there was a zombie apocalypse?”

So that is where it came from. We thought okay, lets add some zombies to it and it can become this persistent world zombie sort of thing.

Q: When you put the game together, did you think that such a vibrant community would end up forming around it? I’ve seen tons of videos online and also dedicated blogs where people chronicle their interactions with other players. In many ways, players in DayZ seem to be acting exactly how they probably would in a real zombie apocalypse.

Dean Hall: It’s kind of what I wanted to happen, but the scale is such an excess of what I thought would happen. I knew it was going to be popular among the Arma community. I knew it was going to be popular within this community because it was something different and it was the first time someone had attempted a mass scale persistent world in Arma. But the scale of it is what surprised me and everyone else. The game is still selling and still growing…

A cottage industry has sort of come from the game as well. We get contacted by people that have had a YouTube channel for a few years and maybe they would get about a thousand views per video, then they start making DayZ stuff and go to having 200,000 to 300,000 views. One guy even quit his job because he makes so much money from YouTube advertising revenue now. It’s fascinating to see this and community elements come out of DayZ.

Q: I’ve read that you’re making a stand alone game and separating DayZ from Arma II. Could you explains how that’s going to work a little bit? Do you have a release date of some sort?

Dean Hall: Ya, it’s going to be by the end of the year. The exact date is going to depend on a few things though. What the stand alone is going to be is a foundation build. I’m trying to get away from calling it an alpha or a beta. It’s not going to be a true alpha in the sense that it’s actually going to be built off of a finished game. But we’ll have something released and it’s going to be released digitally.

Q: So you’re sort of following the Minecraft idea where you’re going to put DayZ out there and then build on it?

Yea, we envision that we’ll have at least a year’s worth of development after the game is released.

Q: I haven’t played DayZ but I’ve spent hours watching various videos of other people playing the game. Why do you think DayZ has the ability to captivate people like this?

Dean Hall: I think it has to do with the emotional situations it forces the player into. The territory that DayZ goes into isn’t ashamed to frightened or frustrate the player. It makes the player angry and it makes them feel negative emotions. This is really important. Not many games allow players to experience loss. In Skyrim, I never feel loss, because you can never really lose in that game. Each time you go forward, you’re winning more and more.

I think what DayZ does is the first time you’re playing it, you’re gathering gear and you’re using these traditional game thinking modes. Then all of a sudden you get shot and “bam” it’s just like that. It’s not like you start bleeding or anything. If you get shot in the head, that’s it, you’re dead. You might have spent 12 hours amassing tons of equipment. Then suddenly you realize that it’s all gone and you sit there just stunned…

This has actually happened to me before and I created the game. You just realize that you’ve just lost it. It’s these kind of emotional responses that DayZ puts on the player…

The graphics might be a little rough around the edges, but with DayZ, it’s the gameplay that counts. FPSguru

Q: Day Z seems to be targeting a really hardcore audience and one of the reasons why I haven’t gotten into it yet, is because I’m so busy all the time. I can’t really get into a game that’s that deep and requires a significant time commitment. Are you worried at all that when the full version of DayZ is released that this is going to create a barrier of entry for your audience?

Dean Hall: One of the biggest barriers at the moment is installing the game because it’s so complex. Another barrier is price. The stand alone is going to be much cheaper than Arma II. But in terms of accessibility, I think the game is actually going to be harder. I guess this is a bad thing in one way but it’s a good thing in another. Personally, I think too many games are becoming too accessible. I’m not a fan of accessibility anymore. I think that accessibility has destroyed some of the games I really like.

Below, watch a video of this DayZ blogger’s episodic emotional experience with the game.